“If I had to pick between songwriting or performing, I think I would pick the songwriting,” says Canadian music legend Dan Hill. “I find it to be more mentally, intellectually and creatively challenging. With the performing, you just have to make sure you’re physically really healthy, your voice is in shape, and that you’ve been practicing a lot of piano and guitar so that your reflexes and playing are strong.”
Dan knows what he’s talking about – he’s been writing songs and performing music since the early ’70s. It was his hit song “Sometimes When We Touch” that put him on the map as an international star. That song rose to No. 3 on the Hot 100 Billboard list and led to appearances on acclaimed television programs like the Merv Griffin Show. Since then, Dan has had other artists, including Celine Dion, Britney Spears, Rod Stewart and Tina Turner, record at least 50 of his songs, but “Sometimes When We Touch” is still his most recorded song.
Even as a young child, Dan was singing and playing instruments. The music his parents listened to was really influential for him – artists like Harry Belafonte, Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald. “Those kinds of artists I fell in love with when I was 4 or 5, so they strike close to the heart,” he shares.
You can especially find that influence in the jazz songs Dan wrote with Joe Sealy, a well-known jazz writer and performer. “We wrote songs about Africville, a little village in Nova Scotia that was sort of black-run until it was expropriated and run into the ground in the ’60s.”
It’s no surprise that Dan has ventured into the political realm – both his mother and father, an interracial couple, were activists. Dan’s often been involved in projects with the Civil Liberties Association and will perform for certain black causes or celebrations. “My parents made me really aware of the underdog and the vulnerable,” he says. “I was reminded to never take things for granted and of how fortunate I am that things have come together so easily for me in terms of my life and career.”
But his parents weren’t always supportive of Dan’s musical endeavours – or at least not when he told them he wanted to make a living at it. “That’s when my father and I had a falling out, and when I left home. We didn’t really talk for a couple of years. The next thing you know, I was on the radio and that was the thing that convinced him – to use his words – that he’d underestimated me.”
His father’s skepticism didn’t stop Dan from being recognized for his talent and, over the years, he’s been the recipient of many awards, including several Junos and a Harold Moon Award for Canadian lifetime songwriting achievement.
The award Dan covets the most, though, is the Grammy he won in 1997 for his co-production of the song “Seduces Me” for Celine Dion’s award-winning “Falling Into You” album. “At the time, she was a really hard person to get to work with,” says Dan. “She was the biggest star in the world and everybody wanted to write for her or produce for her. I was extremely fortunate I’d written a song that really spoke to her spirit and her heart.”
“The experience of recording the song so thoroughly myself,” he continues, “then sending it to her, so she could learn the singing parts, and then going to New York with the recorded track and recording her vocal at the Hit Factory in New York was just thrilling for me.”
For Dan, changes in the music industry over the years haven’t affected his songwriting. “There’s still a craving for real songs. That hasn’t changed in the pop marketplace. People still want to have old-fashioned songs with stories, strong melodies and relatable lyrics.”
When an artist comes looking to Dan for a song, he will help them with the vocals or produce the record himself. “Sometimes the way I produce the demo of the song gives them an idea of how they should produce the song,” he says, “and it’s always interesting to hear another person’s vocals. The song can almost totally change based on who’s singing it.”
Dan writes on his own timelines, unless someone has a recording schedule deadline. But that doesn’t mean he’s not working every day – he is – and not just Monday to Friday, but seven days a week.
“I play guitar or work on songs. There’re always parts of songs that I need to re-write or improve. Then I have to kind of train myself to remember how to play the songs. Sometimes the songs are very advanced, so I have to practice for a long time in order to memorize those songs. It takes me awhile to memorize the lyrics because I have so many songs now.”
Dan still lives in Toronto, the city he grew up in, where he stays in touch with close friends, many whom he grew up with, and family. “It really keeps me grounded,” he says, “that I can communicate with people I really love. Those connections are so important.”
In fact, Dan’s never had the desire to move to a songwriting hub like Nashville or Los Angeles. “I’ve always found that it’s been better for me to come in from the outside. People look at you in a fresh way because you don’t belong there. So, I’ll go to Nashville or LA, set up a bunch of appointments with other songwriters or artists, then busy myself writing or recording them.”
Does Dan have any secrets for those wanting to get into the songwriting business? “Not really,” he says, “you just have to do it. Every day just go to your piano or guitar and start playing. There are times a doctor may not want to go and work with his/her patients, but they still do it. This is a lifetime job, so you approach it just as anybody would with a lifetime job.”
What about his formula for writing hit songs? Amazingly, Dan says he can bang out a new song in an hour. But then the process of rewriting and editing to perfect it happens over the period of a few days. If he’s writing a song for a movie or TV show, he has to get into the characters and their relationships, and the song unfolds around that theme.
“Sometimes I just start fiddling around on the guitar or piano and I get a chord progression that I like. Sometimes words just kind of float out of my brain and I don’t even know where they came from. I write them down and just kind of follow suit on the first couple of words that come out of my mouth. I then realize this is the direction where the song needs to go, and then I write the song.”
“Other times, it’s when I’m tired and emotional that the songs come, because you’re closer to your creative unconscious then. But there are times when I go to the piano or guitar and everything just feels flat, boring and uninspiring,” Dan continues, “so I just have to work through those days and get to the next day where the words do unfold before my eyes. Or sometimes I’ll move over to other business things I have to take care of – there’s always songs you have to register or promoters you have to get back to about touring dates.”
All this time spent writing doesn’t mean Dan’s not still going strong with his live performances. This last year he played at several venues in Canada and the US, and he goes to Asia once or twice a year. He generally tours with a female singer named Wendy Irvine and says his duets with her are a big hit with audiences.
The Asian market loves beautiful melodies and strong, relatable lyrics, and there, Dan’s known as the King of Romance. “I think that’s kind of cute,” he says, “as I never really thought of myself as especially romantic, but I guess people can interpret my songs that way. My profile is a bit bigger in Asia, so I play to larger audiences there. I kind of feel like it’s a throwback to the ’70s and I’m a pop star all over again! It’s really quite an experience playing in the Philippines and Malaysia.”
Generally, Dan’s audience demographics have changed since the ’70s. “A lot of people are older,” he says, “maybe in their 60s and 70s, who have grown up with my music. There are also a lot of couples who have come together through my songs, had their first date, had their first child, got married to my songs.”
“Now they pretty much sit and listen attentively,” Dan continues, “which I like because it shows they’ve been really moved by the song. Whether I’m playing to 50 or 50,000, I’m pretty similarly focused on what I’m doing. There’s a lot of memory work, trying to sing a song I wrote a week ago to remembering a song I wrote 45 years ago. Keeps the mind sharp, but I find it more physically tiring now. I find after two hours of singing my body is more exhausted than when I was in my 20s. Part of the aging process.”
Usually people want to hear the old songs the way they’ve heard them on the radio or record, so Dan keeps them pretty much the same. But they also get the new songs that he maybe hasn’t even recorded yet. “I know they’re coming for the songs they’ve fallen in love with, so what I try to do with the new songs is give them stories about what’s been going on with my life to inspire me to write these new songs,” Dan shares. “Sometimes I talk for five minutes or so before I sing – that kind of invites the audience into the slipstream of the song, so they can relate to it more when I sing it. People say they really like my stories.”
Dan has also written a couple of books and sometimes thinks he might stop music for a while to write another. “I’d like to write about mental illness because that’s something that’s cut like a knife through several members of my family. I feel like my experience and knowledge could help a lot of people. But right now, the music is coming pretty quickly, so I’m just sort of going with that.”
Snapshot
If you were to meet your 20-year-old self, what advice would you give him?
“I would say spend more time writing. Because it’s ultimately the songs that dictate your career. When it’s all said and done, it’s your songs that are still out there ticking, getting air time, getting people to record them and producing income for you, more than anything else.”
Who or what has influenced you the most and why?
“I was influenced very much by writers, book writers as well. My brother’s a very successful novelist, and I’ve always been really impressed and moved by novelists at their ability to tell riveting tales. I’m impressed at how they can put thoughts so succinctly to the written word.”
What are you most grateful for?
“I’m really grateful for the gift that I was born with. I think I was certainly blessed with certain natural gifts that dictated to me as a young child what I was going do.”
What does success mean to you?
“Success means that you can lead the life you want to lead. You don’t need to follow anybody else’s rules but your own. And it gives you the freedom to experiment creatively and branch out even more.”
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